The Way Forward
by baby-rose15
Summary: Season 5 Opener. You forgive the people you want in your life, no matter what they did. Sometimes they're more important than their mistakes.


**Inspired by a number of thing yesterday, I literally saw the conversation play out in my head and had to get it on paper as fast as possible and then I filled in the holes around it. **

**In case you were wondering this is how I see season five opening but it's not actually up to me.**

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><p><span>The<span> Way Forward

Three months ago, she yelled and screamed at him. She'd pushed him, tears streaming down her face and told him to get out. He yelled back and refused to leave, he demanded that they finish the case and then they could talk about it. But when they'd handed the perp over to booking, she'd said there was nothing more to talk about that they were through. She had said it softly without any ire in her tone, looking straight at him. She was tired and disheveled, but it was without any emotion and so he was forced to take it at faced value. So he nodded, kissed her softly, and told her, "I love you," and then he left.

Heat was clinging to the air stale with too many days of summer but no one wants to give it up and he'd been called back to the precinct by none other than Captain Gates, because yet another crazy was imitating his books and Detective Beckett had refused to bring him in. Ryan and Esposito refused mostly because they wouldn't do anything to upset Beckett. Besides, they were mad at Castle too, he could have at least told them.

She'd staunchly listened to his theories, bounced ideas off him, let him ride with her to interviews, and let him in the interrogation room. But she hadn't actually talked to him in the three days. They were staring at the murder board that had been moved into conference room during dinner. Just the two of them staring at the board, the boys having moved off to follow up on their own leads.

He didn't know how long they'd actually been looking at the board but he wasn't focusing on it. He would feel her beside him, the scent of cherries lingering next to him, her body heat seeming to find its way through his clothes. Closing his eyes he let out a breath and decided it was time to face the music, "You're going to have to forgive me at some point."

She didn't look at him, but she didn't hesitate to respond, "Are you sure?"

"No…" The possibility that she wouldn't forgive had occurred to him every morning and he spent every day of the summer convincing himself that she'd have to eventually, "I'm not at all sure… Kate you have to…" He pleaded pushing off the table trying to create some space between them and look at her.

That eerie calm that she'd developed at some point in the last year stole over her body as she set the white board marker down and just looked at him for a moment. "Castle you asked me to back off and I did."

"They were going to kill you," He tried to reason.

"What about you?" He knew that was the sticking point, it wasn't that he'd done it behind her back. Not really, it was because he'd done it without concern for his own safety.

"I have to keep you safe," It was his only reasoning and he readily admitted that it was flimsy reasoning at best.

"You're not a cop."

"I didn't do anything that I needed cops for. I didn't get very far at all." All true, and yet she didn't seem to care, it was the fact that he'd put himself in the line of fire.

"You kept looking without me. You went to secret meetings in parking garages without so much as mentioning to me where you were going let alone what it had to do with anything." So clearly she disagreed, in her book he'd definitely needed cops.

"I wasn't in any danger." He argued back, the deep throat man across the parking garage, and on the phone had never threatened him, never made him fear for his own life, just hers.

"You don't know that!" Emotion was finally infusing her tone, her eyes sparkling with it as she pushed herself up so that they were eye to eye.

He huffed, she wasn't wrong, "Well I'm still here aren't I?"

"Thank god," The confession rattled out of her. "Castle… Rick, if anything… god I can't even… You have a daughter, what were you thinking?" she asked again, clearly she'd spent the summer trying to figure out how he could possibly consider doing something so stupid in her book.

"That I had to help you. I had to solve the case." In reality it was flimsy reasoning, investigating put her in danger and he'd disregarded that and kept looking any way. It was the same reason his daughter had looked at him with so much anger and worry in her eyes a year ago when he first made the choice. But even now, the only reason that he could bring himself to admit he was wrong to do it was that they'd spent yet another summer not talking.

"Without me," It was a pained statement, every other time she'd said it she'd hurled it at him in anger, but now it was the broken statement of a partner that felt like the one person that should have never walked away from her had abandoned her.

The confession bowled him over. In the first three times she'd told him that he'd set about explaining his reasoning again, but the broken words stopped him in his tracks. They'd hit a new level in this battle they were fighting and it was time to end it one-way or the other. Taking a deep breath, trying to fortify himself. "We've had this argument," He tells her running a hand through his hair.

She purses her lips and nods her head, "Too many times."

"Why do we keep coming back to it?" He truly wants to know. They haven't had anything different to say every time and neither of them is backing down.

"Because you kept it from me," Her tone is sad, desperate and he has to fight the urge to reach out and wrap his arms around her and tell her it's all going to be ok.

"So be mad at me and cut me out of your life," It's sounds silly but it's what she's been trying to do all summer, and she might have been successful if the traitorous Captain Gates hadn't brought him in herself. But even that's not true, she's called him a dozen times over the summer never being brave enough to actually say something but she calls and the first time he tried to get her to talk. When that was fruitless he took to apologizing, trying to reason with her, and telling her how much he missed her. She would just listen never saying anything, and never hanging up.

"I can't," the admission drops from her lips like a dirty secret she's been hiding. Worse than the one, she kept from him for a year trying to protect him from her.

His head snapped back up, eyes locking with her because he thought that it would be the time when she would finally sever all ties with him and he would never get another phone call to just listen to her breath, "What do you mean you can't?" He desperately needs to know.

"I can't. Every time I turn around there's something…" She's stepped closer to him and tears are leaking out of her eyes, and she has to fight the urge to wrap her arms around him and envelop herself in everything that is Richard Castle. Instead, she forces herself to look at his beautiful blue eyes that are swimming with heartache. "I love you god dammit, and I'm so mad at you that I can't wrap my head around both."

His breath hitches, he knows that she loves him. She told him as much a dozen times before he turned on the murder board and walked her through his own secret. But now's not the time to dwell on it, if this is it then he has to get her to see that she wants him here, because he she doesn't then he needs to go, he's not even sure where but he has to get out. "You don't wrap your head around both, you be mad at me, and you love me."

"Rick…" she stutters, and he finally breaks the invisible wall they've had between them and reaches out to wrap and hand around her elbow, to just touch her one more time.

"Kate, that's what people do when they love each other. They get mad at each other and then they fight about it because that's how they figure it out. But they don't stop loving each other." He just looks at her trying to soak in every last thing that is Kate, because he's certain that this will be the last time he sees her and he has to remember every detail of how her hair feels, and the flecks of gold in her eyes that sparkle when she's happy.

But the choice is up to her now, it doesn't matter for him anymore she's it and he'll do anything to make her happy. But she's the one that has to make the choice, "You have to decide whether you want me in your life and that's enough to forgive me or you stay mad at me." That's all he can bare at the moment, he has to leave or he'll be a puddle of emotions on the precinct floor. So he drops her elbow, and leans in to brush a kiss on her forehead trying not to focus on the eyelashes fluttering closed against his chin. With that, he turns on his heel and makes to leave.

The lithe fingers wrapping around his wrist before he even made it two steps, are completely unexpected. If she came after him, he was at least expecting to make it to the elevator, but she hadn't even let him get out of the room before she was tugging him back to her. "That's the thing," she steps up to him so their chests are brushing and she has to tilt her chin just a little bit to meet his eyes, "I love you."

"I love you too," the admission rumbles from him.

"And I need you here with me," She plows on ahead.

"You need me here…"

"I need you here with me, so I'm forced to forgive you."

"You forgive me." The confessions are falling fast, and he's simply trying to keep up with what she's saying.

She looks at him very seriously, "It doesn't mean that I'm not still mad at you."

"You're still mad at me," He nods his head just trying to confirm what he's heard, even though his heart feels lighter than it has in months.

"I'm mad you for doing it, but I'm not mad at you," she clarifies, reaching up to stroke a hand down his jaw line. The reaction it earns her was instantaneous as his free arm wrapped around her waist and he did the one thing he's been dying to since the elevator doors opened on the homicide floor three days ago. He buries his head in her hair and just holds her.

"We lost so much time," he whispers against her neck.

And she can't help the little chuckle that comes up, "Every summer…" she tells him and its true every summer something comes between them, like their partnership couldn't take the heat.

"Next summer I'm not letting you out of my sight," He tells her feeling more light hearted than he had since she'd told him she loved him the first time.

She pulls away just a little bit forcing him to look at her and she tells him very seriously, "Well it's fall now so can we figure it us out now."

"Yeah. Yeah, we can," He sighs with relief, releasing her waist so that he can tuck her hair behind her ears.

"We work on it together." Her tone brokers no disagreement, if he wants her he agrees.

So he agrees, "Together."

"I can't have you hiding things from me."

"I can't lose you," He confesses.

She swallows quickly, "I can't lose you either. So we do it together or we don't do it at all." It's come down to this, she has to make the choice. Him or her mother, and while she wants both she knows which one she'll chose if it comes down to it.

"I can't ask you to give up your mothers case," He can see what she's doing, but he can't get his head around the choice.

"I'm not asking you to."

"Then what are you asking me to do?" He asks because he can't figure out the subtext at the moment and he's usually really good at that.

"To do it with me." She's blunt, sensing that he needs all the cards on the table, "When we do it, we do it together. We tell each other everything that we find, because I need you there when I fall apart. Because that's my mom's case is my past and I want to close it but it's my past."

"It's your past?" He feels like an idiot even asking, but her mom's case has driven her from the moment he met her. Even when she refused to look into it that first year, it was always there.

But she smiles, that soft, adoring smile that she reserves for him. "Yes and you," she gently pokes him, "you silly, wonderful, charming, loving man are my future."

"Your… your future," He stutters in his disbelief.

"Yes, you are my future." Suddenly, she realizes that he might have a different choice, and she has to ask, "If I'm yours?"

He sees the panic flit across her face, and he laughs and picks her up around the waist and spins them around in a circle of joy. "Of course you are," he assures her, "since that first time you arrested me you've been it Kate Beckett. I want to love you and marry you and have babies with you."

"Don't get ahead of yourself," She laughs though because she wants all of those things too.

His voice is softer now, as he sets her down but he doesn't let go. "Mostly, I just want you to be happy and alive."

"And for some reason I just want you to be happy and alive too." She tells him matching his tone, losing herself in the sparkling blue of his eyes.

"So what do we do now?" He finally asks.

She swallows, because they've come to this point and he's still letting her take the lead. Letting her know that he'll follow her to the ends of the earth just as long as she lets him come. "We solve this case so you can take me back to loft and we'll make up for another missed summer. And when we get clues, and leads we share them and you stop me from going down the rabbit hole."

He swallows and presses his forehead to hers never breaking their eye contact. "Ok we can do that." Then he's pressing his lips to hers ever so lightly relishing in the ability to do it again. The last time hadn't been nearly enough; he doesn't think it'll ever be enough. But she's pressing her whole body against him, fingers slipping into his hair as she opens up under him urging him to go deeper, and he knows that it'll never be enough for her either. So he follows her lead, going deeper.

They forget that they're in the conference room with windows and no blinds and they don't really care, until the door swings open and Ryan clears his throat. "Guys we got something," the detective tells them when he finally thinks they're paying enough attention, before he leaves them alone.

They're still tangled in each other, breathing the same air, when he presses a kiss to her forehead, harder and filled with joy before he releases her, "Let's go solve this case because I really need to take you home." Her answering smile is all that it takes to get them back to work.

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><p><strong>Please tell me what you thought, the little review button is very friendly and so am I!<strong>

**Thanks for reading!**

**Babyrose  
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